INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS 113 



related to external conditions, must be an ex- 

 pression of psychic functional inertia. In matters 

 psychic we have functional inertia once more 

 playing its part in those curious but well-authen- 

 ticated cases of hysterical or hypnotic anaesthe- 

 sias. They are very often hemi-anaesthesias : 

 the hysterical patient or the person hypnotised 

 declares he is blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, 

 insensitive on one side of his body ; or cannot 

 distinguish port wine from castor-oil. Dr. Waller * 

 in alluding to the cerebral cause in this condition 

 uses the words, " some functional disorder or 

 incapacity ; " clearly the opposite of affectability 

 is meant. There is a psychic functional inertia 

 established as part of the hypnosis or the hysteria, 

 how, we know not. Where Heidenhain has used 

 the term " inhibition " as designating the with- 

 drawal of attention and other phenomena of defect 

 in hypnosis, it seems to me that cerebral functional 

 inertia more nearly describes the molecular state 

 underlying the undoubted psychic inertia of the 

 state of profound in-attention or abstraction ob- 

 served. As Heidenhain f remarks, " the hypno- 

 tised person is distinguished from the normal in 

 that, for him, the liminal value of stimulation is 

 extraordinarily high : " molecular inertia must here 

 have been the causal condition to bring this about. 



* A. D. Waller, " On the Functional Attributes of the Cerebral 

 Cortex." Brain, vol. xv. 1892, p. 365. 



t R. Heidenhain, Hypnotism Translation. (London, 1892.) 



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